Jenny Barnett, Cambridge Cognition

Give or take one or two, every person in the health-tech universe has rhapsodized about the potential of smart watches to contribute to the monitoring and treatment of chronic conditions. In recent months, the most compelling such program was assembled by an unlikely pair of partners: Takeda’s US arm and Cognition Kit, itself a joint venture between Cambridge Cognition and Ctrl Group. Together they’ve developed an Apple Watch app designed to help monitor cognitive function in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) patients, currently being used by 30 patients as part of a small-scale study. Barnett, Cambridge Cognition’s chief science officer, has been hailed as one of the main drivers of the project, not to mention others that play at the intersection of wearable technology and neuroscience. “We’ve created an app that collects real-time passive and active high-frequency mental data,” Barnett said in a statement when the program rolled out in February. “Being able to access data regularly from daily life can help clinical decision-making.” Study results are expected to be made public during the summer.